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Thursday, October 31, 2013

Home Made Halloween

Well we got Wub's Firestar costume done in time for Trick or Treat to be rescheduled. We're under a severe weather warning here. It's been raining and ick all day long. Hopefully tomorrow night will have better weather and She'll get to go to a few houses.
I finished up her mask at 1:00 in the morning last night. It's definitely flamey enough now.

I'm ridiculously happy with how it all turned out.

I had three other costumes to make this year. My nephew Brandon needed a bit of help with his costume for work. I was so super excited to help.

Because our costume was a wee bit larger I made a few changes. We used a queen size egg crate and the overalls were made from a twin size flat sheet. I had to sew parts of it because I didn't think the glue would hold up. Considering how quick and easy Wub's costume was I would have to say this definitely qualifies as a labour of love. There is probably 20-30 hours of work in it including having to hand sew in nearly 10 feer of velcro tape so the whole thing would close. Her advice about the aspirin and wine? I wish I could have taken it. Funny thing is I want to make an army of them next year, so it didn't break me.

And yes, he really is ginormous. the costume on was in the 8-9 feet tall range. To give you some perspective here is a picture of me and him together. I am 5'9" and he towers over me.

Which brings us to my last two costumes. Both of which took less than an hour apiece to make.

Let's start with MHM's.

Basically I took a long sleeve knit shirt, (we didn't have black so this grey henley was our best option. The I took about 1/2 yard of black felt and folded it in half.. Used the shirt as a guide I eyeballed a triangle shape then traced a dinner plate along the edge of the triangle to form the wings. I held the felt together and cut both wings at once.

I then used a zigzag stitch to attach the wings to each sleeve and side of the shirt. I found a bat mask I liked with a Google image search. Printed it out then traced the shape onto black foam. Cut out the mask and sewed an elastic to it. From first cut to final fit 43 minutes. That includes having to replace the needle on my sewing machine.

For my spider costume I cut four circles out of red foam and four our of black and sandwiched a pipe cleaner in between. These are the spider eyes. I wrapped the pipe cleaners around a coffee stirrer because they were too floppy then pushed these into my bun and bobby pinned in place. My original idea had been to cover ascending sized styrofoam balls in red paint and red glitter. I was going to stack them on long wooden skewers and use them as eyes/hair ornaments. I forgot to buy the styrofoam balls so that went bye bye.

I wore a black maxi dress and a black sweater that reminded me of witchy/spider webs. A long sleeved black tee and black pants would have worked to. I thought about freezer paper stenciling a red violin on the back of my long sleeve black tee but decided against it because the shirt fits perfectly, is super comfy and is a great finish piece for a casual outfit. Not so much with a glittery red violin on the back. Also nobody got time for that.

I measured a piece of elastic to fit snugly and comfortably below the bust. I then cut 3 pieces of black felt about 4 inches wide times the entire width of the fabric. I sewed the each strip along one edge and then trimmed close to the stitching. I threaded the elastic through one of the tubes stay stitching the elastic at each end. Then I formed the elasticised felt tube into a ring and stitched together using several passes of zigzag stitches. I the centered the two remaining tubes over this and zigzagged them down. These are the legs.

Next I took some cotton twine and tied a knot around the end of the leg I wanted to be the bottom leg. I then took the end of the felt tube and knotted it over the string to keep it secure. I eyeballed about a foot of play in the twine and tied another knot around the top leg again knotting the felt around the twine. I then eyeballed about 18 inches and tied a slipknot loop for my wrist. Lather, rinse repeat for the other side.

All told 1 hour from cut to finish. This included breaking a sewing machine needle at the start and sewing one entire leg without any bobbin thread. (which of course required winding a bobbin and rethreading the machine)

In the morning I put on a boat load of eye makeup, my dress and sweater, settled the belt under my bust with the legs at the back. Shoved the eyes into my bun and looped the slipknots over my wrist. Voila! Spider costume!